term has been chequered; if we take even the simplest route to its history we can see a shifting from the highlighting of one aspect of
usage to another.
15
Discourse analysis is the study about discourse, from the internal and external side. From the internal side, discourse is studied from the
type, structure and the relation between all of the parts. From the external side, discourse is studied from the discourse complication
with the speaker. What is said , and the listener.
16
Due to the fact that the writer is going to conduct a research about discourse analysis using pragmatic approach, the writer also takes a
note from Joan Cutting‘s book. In his book, it is said that pragmatics and discourse analysis are approaches to studying language‘s relation
to the contextual background features. It means that in understanding a statement or utterance, listener or reader do not only pay their attention
to the words or the meaning. They also have to focus on why and how the utterances are produced.
17
Moreover, as discourse analysis in this research is so related to a context, the next explaination is about context.
C. Context
The notion of context is so central to pragmatic that most definition of the field make explicit reference to it. By its very nature, context is a
15
Sara Mills. Discourse, London: Routledge, 1997, p. 1
16
Praptomo Baryadi, op cit, pp. 3-4
17
Joan Cutting, Pragmatics and Discourse New York: Routledge 2002, p.1
broad concept that involves physical, linguistic, epistemic and social elements. Physical context includes features such as day and time in a
conversation. Linguistic context includes some elements of it, one of them is implicature. The epistemic context describes the shared
background knowledge and beliefs between speaker and listener in a conversation. Finally, it is a feature of social context, specifically some
degree of social distance.
18
Furthermore, according to Joan Cutting, contest is so related to discourse analysis and pragmatics study. In other words, both of them
study the meaning ofwords in context, analyzing the part of meaning that can be explained by knowledge of the physical and social world,
and the socio-psychological factors influencing communication, as well as the knowledge of the time and place in which the words are
uttered or written.
19
D. Pragmatic
Pragmatic is concerned with the interpretation of linguistic meaning and context. Two kinds of contexts are relevant. The first is
linguistic context —the discourse that precedes the phrase or sentence
to be interpreted. The second one is situational context. It includes the speaker,
hearer, and any third parties present along with their beliefs and their
18
Louise Cummings, Clinical Pragmatics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 19
19
Joan Cutting, Pragmatics and Discourse New York: Routledge 2002, p.2
beliefs about what the other believe. It also includes the physical environment, the subject of conversation, the time of day, and so on,
ad infinitum. Almost any imaginable extra-linguistic factor may, under appropriate circumstances, influence the way language is interpreted.
Pragmatic is also about language use. It tells that calling a man son of a bitch is no
t a zoological opinion, it‘s an insult. It tells us that when a beggar on the street asks do you have any spare change? It is not a
fiduciary inquiry, it is a request for money. It tells us that when a justice of the peace says, in the appropriate setting, I now pronounce
you man and wife, an act of marrying is performed
20
. According to Philip Strazny, pragmatic is the study of language
usage. Whereas the study of pragmatic focuses on the language system, pragmatic offers a complementary perspective on language,
providing an insight into the linguistic choices that users make in social situation. Pragmatics is for instance, interested in how people
pay compliments, engaged in small talk, or write e-mails. The communicative functions of utterances or texts and
the speaker‘s or writer‘s intentions behind them, are of particular interest. Historically,
the emphasis was on spoken language.
21
According to Yule, Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker or writer and interpreted by a
20
Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman, An Introduction to Language sixth edition, New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishher, 1998, p. 191
21
Philipp Strazny, Encyclopedia of Linguistics Volume 2, Britain: Fitzroy Dearborn,
2005, p. 869
listener or reader. It has, consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances that what the words and
phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves. Pragmatics is the study of the speaker meaning.
The type of study necessarily involves the interpretation of what people mean in particular context and how the context influences what
is said. It requires a consideration of how speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who they‘re talking to, when, where,
and under what circumstances. Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning.
This approach also necessarily explores how listeners can make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an interpretation of
the speaker‘s intended meaning. This type of study explores how a great deal of what is unsaid is recognized as part of what is
communicated. We might say that it is the investigation of invisible meaning. Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than
is said
22
. Furthermore, there are several areas existing in pragmatics study.
They are deixis, implicature, speech act and presupposition, reference, politeness and entailment. In this research, the writer deals with one of
the pragmatics branches which is called presupposition.
22
George Yule, Pragmatics, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 3
E. Presupposition
